Arguing About Literature: A Brief Guide

305 Pages·2015·8.42 MB·English

by  John Schilb & John Clifford

Resources for Teaching
JOHN SCHILB • JOHN CLIFFORD
JOYCE HOLLINGSWORTH • LAURA SPARKS
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Sample Student Drafts and Revisions 4
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Justin Korzack, How to Slow Down the Rush to War (argument in response
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to an argument), 21–24
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Ann Schumwalt, The Mother’s Mixed Messages in “Girl” (argument about
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a literary work), 57–60
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Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in “The Solitary Reaper” (illustrating
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the writing process), 104–06, 110–12
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Jeremy Cooper, Don Paterson’s Criticism of Nature’s Owners (comparing 12
literary texts), 116–20 13
Tanya Vincent, The Real Meaning of “Charity” in “A Visit of Charity” 14
(argument about a story), 137–40 15
Michaela Fiorucci, Negotiating Boundaries (argument about a poem), 16
146–48, 154–56 17
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Karl Magnusson, Lack of Motion and Speech in Rolando Perez’s “Office
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at Night” (comparing a literary text and an image), 159–62
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Trish Carlisle, Which Is the Stronger Actress in August Strindberg’s Play?
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(argument about a play), 176–78
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Isla Bravo, Resisting Women’s Roles (argument about an essay), 189–92 23
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Annotated Student Research Papers 25
Sarah Michaels, “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a Guide to Social Factors in 26
Postpartum Depression (using a literary work to analyze social issues), 27
208–12 28
Katie Johnson, The Meaning of the Husband’s Fainting in “The Yellow 29
Wallpaper” (using literary critical sources), 213–17 30
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Jacob Grobowicz, Using Foucault to Understand Disciplinary Power in
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Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (using a theoretical lens or frame to
examine a work), 218–23 33
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Brittany Thomas, The Relative Absence of the Human Touch in “The
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Yellow Wallpaper” (examining a work in its historical context), 224–27
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Arguing about Literature 2
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a b r i e f g u i d e
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John Schilb 17
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Indiana University 19
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John Clifford
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University of North Carolina at Wilmington 24
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BEDFORD / ST. MARTIN’S Boston j New York 46 R
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Copyright © 2014 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
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ISBN 978-1-4576-6483-0 (Student Edition)
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ISBN 978-1-4576-6513-4 (Instructor’s Edition)
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Acknowledgments
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David Barno. “A New Moral Compact.” © 2012, Foreign Policy.
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Carlos Fraenkel. “In Praise of the Clash of Cultures.” Reprinted by permission of the author.
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Paul Goldberger. “Disconnected Urbanism.” Reprinted by permission of the author.
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Acknowledgments and copyrights are continued at the back of the book on page 275, which constitute an
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Preface for Instructors
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Arguing about Literature: A Brief Guide will help your students learn to read both 12
argumentative and literary texts closely and critically as it helps them turn 13
their reading into well-supported and rhetorically effective argumentative 14
writing. It also is the first part of Arguing about Literature: A Guide and Reader, 15
which combines two books: a guide to writing skills, especially means of argu- 16
ment; and a collection of literature, organized by themes. Both versions of 17
Arguing about Literature connect the teaching of literature with the teaching 18
of composition, offer substantial advice about writing, and include numerous 19
sample papers. In particular, we give students much aid in writing arguments 20
on various topics. We emphasize that an argument is ideally not a form of 21
war but instead a civilized effort that people make to show their ideas are 22
reasonable. 23
To be clear: this brief guide you hold does include a sampling of fiction, 24
poetry, drama, essays, and argumentative writing, but without the larger 25
book’s substantial thematic anthology. In making available the guide without 26
the anthology, we assume some instructors who find our pedagogical chapters 27
useful may prefer the option of assigning their own choice of literary or argu- 28
mentative readings rather than our thematic selection. 29
Both brief and full versions of Arguing about Literature — l ike our previous 30
and much more ample literature anthology, Making Literature Matter — a re de- 31
signed for two common kinds of courses. The first is a composition course 32
where students learn techniques of argument by practicing them through es- 33
says they write, principally about literature. The second is a literature course 34
that helps students craft good arguments about their readings. Often, each of 35
these courses also stresses research, an activity we therefore explain in detail. 36
As their titles imply, however, both versions of Arguing about Literature pay 37
more attention than Making Literature Matter to argument — with much in- 38
struction in reading and writing the genre of argument, and numerous ex- 39
amples for students to study, respond to, and emulate. 40
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What’s in This Guide
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This guide begins with a chapter introducing basic elements of argument. 44
With a provocative essay on cell phones serving as our chief example, we care- 45 S
fully elaborate terms such as rhetoric, issues, claims, audience, evidence, and ethos. 46 R
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vi Preface for instructors
1 Then, Chapter 2 reinforces the principles we have outlined by explaining how
2 students can use these to write analyses of literary works. Chapter 3 describes
3 and demonstrates methods of close reading, a concept we turn into concrete
4 strategies that students can actually wield. The subsequent chapter returns to
5 the writing process, familiarizing students with other moves that foster good
6 argument essays. Chapter 5 shows how to write arguments about the main
7 literary genres: short stories, poems, plays, and essays. Chapter 6 focuses on
8 how to write researched arguments; the chapter includes not one but four
9 papers — concrete examples annotated to show students the various elements
10 of common types of research-based assignments, such as using a literary work
11 as a springboard to examine social issues, or placing a work in historical
12 and cultural context. All of the papers are about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s
13 feminist classic “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which we reprint along with several
14 documents that put it in historical context. The guide concludes with an ap-
15 pendix that identifies and demonstrates contemporary critical approaches to
16 literature, ranging from reader-response and feminist criticism to postcolonial
17 criticism.
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Available as an e-Book
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Arguing about Literature: A Brief Guide is also available as a PDF-style e-book.
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You can find further information about the PDF-style e-book via the online
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catalog page; visit bedfordstmartins.com/arguingaboutlit/catalog.
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26 Available with Resources for Teaching
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A print-only evaluation copy of Arguing about Literature: A Brief Guide comes
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with teaching advice bound into it, including suggestions for teaching argu-
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mentation, composition, and literature. It also includes an annotated bibliog-
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raphy for further research and commentaries on most of the argumentative
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and literary works in the guide. Use ISBN 978-1-4576-6513-4 to order a
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copy, or visit the Bedford/St. Martin’s catalog (bedfordstmartins.com/catalog)
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for further information.
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Available with an Anthology
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38 As we mentioned, this guide is also included in a larger book, Arguing about
39 Literature: A Guide and Reader, which features additional chapters on the themes
40 of family, love, freedom and confinement, justice, and journeys. Each thematic
41 chapter includes fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and arguments, all of which
42 are grouped in clusters that focus on particular issues — for example, stories
43 about mothers and daughters, plays about constraining marriages, arguments
44 about crime and punishment, poems about racial injustice, and essays about
45 S immigrant experience — so that students can gain insights by comparing texts.
46 R (Please note the large Guide and Reader version is not available as an e-book.) To
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Preface for instructors vii
view a full table of contents and order an evaluation copy, visit bedfordstmartins 1
.com/arguingaboutlit/catalog. 2
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Acknowledgments
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The terrific staff at Bedford/St. Martin’s continue to be wise and generous collabo- 6
rators in our efforts. Once again, we have relied especially on three people who are 7
wonderful guides and true friends: senior executive editor Steve Scipione; edito- 8
rial director, English, Karen Henry; and co-president of Macmillan Higher Edu- 9
cation Joan Feinberg. Moreover, we want to express thanks to the highly 10
supportive president of Bedford/St. Martin’s, Denise Wydra, and former edito- 11
rial assistant Laura Horton. In production, we are grateful to director Susan W. 12
Brown and associate director Elise Kaiser; to managing editor Michael Granger 13
and assistant managing editor John Amburg; and especially to our gracious, 14
wise, and attentive production editor Lori Roncka and her assistant Erica 15
Zhang, who kept us on track and on schedule. In the permissions department, 16
manager Kalina Ingham, permissions editor Caryn Burtt, photo researcher 17
Sarah D’Stair, and photo research manager Martha Friedman expertly and ef- 18
ficiently negotiated and obtained reprint rights. In marketing, we are most 19
grateful to director Karen Soeltz, associate director Jane Helms, and marketing 20
manager Stacey Propps. 21
We thank Janet E. Gardner, formerly of the University of Massachusetts– 22
Dartmouth, for her contributions to the chapter on research, as well as Joyce 23
Hollingsworth of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and Laura 24
Sparks of Indiana University for their contributions to the instructor’s manual. 25
As always, John Schilb is indebted to his former University of Maryland 26
colleague Jeanne Fahnestock and his current colleagues at Indiana University, 27
especially Christine Farris, Kathy Smith, and Lisa Ottum. John Clifford thanks 28
poet Daniel Terry for his help. 29
Of course, we remain grateful as well to the instructors whose comments on 30
various editions of our first literature anthology Making Literature Matter honed 31
our thinking on literature and argument, and many of whom urged us to con- 32
sider shorter, more argument-intensive versions of the book: Julie Aipperspach 33
Anderson, Texas A&M University; Jonathan Alexander, University of Southern 34
Colorado; Donna Allen, Erie Community College; Virginia Anderson, University 35
of Texas at Austin; Liana Andreasen, South Texas College; Sonja L. Andrus, 36
Collin County Community College; Andrew Armond, Belmont Abbey College; 37
Carolyn Baker, San Antonio College; Rance G. Baker, San Antonio College; 38
Barbara Barnard, Hunter College; Charles Bateman, Essex County College; Linda 39
Bensel-Meyers, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Elaine Boothby, South River 40
High School; Colleen Brooks-Edgar, South Texas College; Elizabeth L. Cobb, 41
Chapman University; Chauna Craig, Indiana University of Pennsylvania; 42
Timothy R. Cramer, Santa Monica College; Michael A. Cronin, Northern Okla- 43
homa College; Rosemary B. Day, Central New Mexico Community College– 44
Montoya Campus; Thomas Deans, Kansas State University; Kevin J. H. Dettmar, 45 S
Pomona College; Jennifer Dorfield, Westfield State College; Michael Doyle, Blue 46 R
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viii Preface for instructors
1 Ridge Community College; Penelope Dugan, Richard Stockton College of New
2 Jersey; Thomas Dukes, University of Akron; Mary Dutterer, Howard Commu-
3 nity College; Kelly Edmisten, University of North Carolina at Wilmington;
4 Irene R. Fairley, Northeastern University; Joli Furnari, Montclair State Univer-
5 sity; Selma Goldstein, Rider University; Martha K. Goodman, Central Virginia
6 Community College; Christopher Gould, University of North Carolina at Wilm-
7 ington; Maureen Groome, Brevard Community College; Chad Hammett, Texas
8 State University; Martin Harris, Belmont Abbey College; William Harrison,
9 Northern Virginia Community College; Iris Rose Hart, Santa Fe Community
10 College; Carol Peterson Haviland, California State University, San Bernardino;
11 Ana Hernandez, Miami-Dade College–Wolfson; John Heyda, Miami University–
12 Middletown; Jeff Hoogeveen, Lincoln University; Richard Dean Hovey, Pima
13 Community College; Karen Howard, Volunteer State Community College;
14 Clark Hutton, Volunteer State Community College; Joan Kellerman, University
15 of Massachusetts–Dartmouth; Sabine A. Klein, Purdue University; Sonya
16 Lancaster, University of Kansas; Kasee Clifton Laster, Ashland University;
17 Marianne Layer, Armstrong Atlantic State University; Margaret Lindgren, Uni-
18 versity of Cincinnati; Betty Mandeville, Volunteer State Community College;
19 Kelly Martin, Collin County Community College; Phillip Mayfield, Fullerton Col-
20 lege; Miles S. McCrimmon, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College; Christopher
21 McDermott, University of Georgia; Mandy McDougal, Volunteer State Commu-
22 nity College; Steven Newman, University of Nebraska–Omaha; Dana Nichols,
23 Gainesville State College; Jim O’Loughlin, University of Northern Iowa; Gordon
24 O’Neal, Collin County Community College; Christine Peter, University of
25 Massachusetts–Dartmouth; Brenton Phillips, Cloud County Community Col-
26 lege; Nancy Lawson Remler, Armstrong Atlantic State University; David Rollison,
27 College of Marin; Jane Rosecrans, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College;
28 Teri Rosen, Hunter College; Lisa Roy-Davis, Collin County Community College;
29 Donna Samet, Broward Community College; Jamie Sanchez, Volunteer State
30 Community College; Daniel Schierenbeck, University of Central Missouri;
31 Meryl F. Schwartz, Lakeland Community College; Pauline Scott, Alabama State
32 University; Julie Segedy, Chabot College; Lucia Seranyan, Northern Virginia
33 Community College, Woodbridge Campus; Kimberly Alford Singh, Northern
34 Virginia Community College; Jason Skipper, Miami University at Oxford; Jennifer
35 Smith, Miami University at Oxford; Debra L. Snyder, Livingstone College;
36 Jamieson Spencer, St. Louis Community College; Pam Stinson, Northern Okla-
37 homa College; Jonathan Taylor, Ferris State University; Julie Tilton, San Ber-
38 nardino Valley College; Larry A. Van Meter, Texas A&M University; William
39 Verrone, University of North Carolina at Wilmington; Phillippe (Phil) West,
40 Concordia University; Sharon Winn, Northeastern State University; Bertha
41 Wise, Oklahoma City Community College; Pauline G. Woodward, Endicott College.
42 As with Making Literature Matter, we dedicate this book to our wives,
43 Wendy Elliot and Janet Ellerby. May our relationships with them never be com-
44 pact, always expanding.
45 S
46 R John Schilb, Indiana University
47 L John Clifford, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

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Preface for instructors ix
You get more resources for Arguing about Literature 1
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